Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Abolitionism
In 1848 there were about 2.5 million people enslaved in the United States—and the number was increasing. The addition of vast new territories acquired from Mexico meant that slavery could increase even more. That was the battle that Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s husband, Henry, was fighting in the summer of 1848.
Elizabeth Cady was born in 1815 to a wealthy upstate New York family that enslaved at least three people. As a teenager she was converted to anti-slavery by her much-older cousin, Gerrit Smith. He also introduced her to the abolitionist Henry Stanton, whom she married against her parents’ wishes.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s commitment was to women’s rights, not abolitionism. When it comes to anti-slavery, we see her agreeing with the people around her—nearly everyone she spent time with was an abolitionist—but not taking action on her own.
After the Civil War, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments gave African American men the right to vote. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her friend Susan B. Anthony strongly opposed the amendments because women had not been included. This caused a split between them and the other human rights activists, including Frederick Douglass. In her speeches in these later years, Stanton sometimes used insulting language to describe African Americans.
The Irish Potato Famine
The Irish potato famine lasted from 1845 to 1849. It was caused by a mold called Phytophthora infestans, which flourishes in cool, wet weather. Today it is better known as “late blight.” It still devastates tomato and potato crops.
It was disastrous in Ireland because many people lived entirely on potatoes and had no access to any other food, and because the blight recurred for several years. The British government, which ruled Ireland at the time, did not do enough to help the starving Irish.
English landlords owned big Irish estates where families like Bridie’s lived. The landlords exported the grain grown on their estates to England while their Irish tenants starved. When the tenants couldn’t pay their rent, the landlords pulled down the cottages. The landlords wanted to have fewer tenants; in fact, they wanted there to be fewer Irish people. Some landlords paid for ships to take their tenants to the New World. Some of the ships were in bad shape, and so were the tenants. These unseaworthy hulks were the so-called “coffin ships.” Many of the refugees did not arrive alive.
The population of Ireland has never returned to pre-famine numbers. The ruins of the pulled-down stone cottages can still be seen in the Irish countryside today.
This picture from The Illustrated London News in 1848 shows an Irish family’s house being torn down.
Phrenology
Phrenology was the study of natural bumps on the head. It was thought that from the shape of a person’s skull you could learn about his or her personality traits, abilities, and intelligence. Feeling someone’s bumps and consulting a phrenology chart could tell you all about them.
A phrenology diagram from 1834
It was nonsense, of course. Different parts of the brain do govern different abilities, but you can’t tell how someone’s brain works by looking at or feeling their skull. The skull is bone, not brain.
Many intelligent people—including Stanton—believed in phrenology. But these people also liked to tell stories about how someone’s personality turned out to be completely different from what the bumps said it should be.
Changes in Scenery in New York State Since 1848
The state is no longer referred to as “York State,” as it often was in the nineteenth century.
Wheat is no longer a major crop in New York State, but it was in 1848.
The Erie Canal no longer goes into downtown Rochester. It was rerouted in the twentieth century, and today passes through the outskirts of the city.
The longest bridge in the Western Hemisphere is long gone. Instead of crossing Cayuga Lake, travelers today drive through the Montezuma Swamp on US Route 20. (Look for eagle nests.)
Cayuga Long Bridge
The Flats, the islands in the Seneca River where many factories stood, are now underneath Van Cleef Lake. There are no waterfalls in Seneca Falls now; they are also under the lake.
Malaria is no longer endemic to Seneca Falls.
The modern locks on the Cayuga & Seneca Canal are not in the same places as the locks of 1848.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s house still stands, but is smaller than it was. The Wesleyan Chapel, where the convention was held, is a replica. These sites are operated by the National Park Service and can be visited in the summer months.
There is much more wildlife in New York State than there was in 1848. Species that were driven to near extinction in the northeastern United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have since been reintroduced or have recovered on their own. Rose and Bridie do not see deer, small mammals, wild turkeys, eagles, or great blue herons. But if you follow the route they took, you might.
I am very grateful to the staff at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York. Education specialist Denise DeLucia and rangers Rebecca Weaver and Kyle Harvey provided me with all kinds of historical details large and small. Visual information specialist Zack/Cora Frank went out to take some video to answer one of my questions, in the middle of a polar vortex when the temperature was -10°F. You are all wonderful!
Many thanks also to:
Ranger Rita Knox at the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park (which actually has real live mule-drawn boats) for explaining the intricacies of mule team right-of-way and how mule teams pass through locks;
Lori D. Ginzberg, author of Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life, for answering my questions and providing insights into Stanton’s character;
Gregory Hays for helping me research the grammatical rules of Quaker thee and thy, which are very different from the rules for the archaic English pronouns thou, thee, and thy;
Marsha Watson, Joyce Witkowski, and other staff at the Fred & Harriet Taylor Memorial Library, who tracked down many obscure books for me, including one about New York State railroads in the 1840s;
Tammy L. Brown, associate professor at Miami University, who checked the manuscript for historical accuracy;
and Aaron Schwabach, who helped me track down weird old laws and words.
And thanks to Diane Landolf, Caitlin Blasdell, and Joel Naftali for everything.
Any errors that remain are my own.
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